


A Matter of Faith

by Kilerkki



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dalish Lore, Fictional Religion & Theology, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 01:04:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6882787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kilerkki/pseuds/Kilerkki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things might be easier if the Inquisitor gave up on his own gods and played the good Andrastian elf, but Talmor Lavellan has never been interested in the Chantry's definition of good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Matter of Faith

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place prior to _Here Lies the Abyss_ and all the revelations contained therein. Imagine Talmor Lavellan as a snarky little red-haired, golden-eyed Elven twink, and you won't be far off.

Things would be easier, Talmor Lavellan knows, if he just gave up and played the good elf. Accept the Maker as his god and Andraste as His intercessor; show up at Skyhold's Chantry at dawn to sing the Chant of Light, and stay on afterwards for remedial lessons with Mother Giselle. Track down a specialist healer to erase his _vallaslin_ , that constant reminder to anyone who looks at him that only three years ago he dedicated himself to Mythal the Protector. 

Stay away from the Tevinter.

"They keep slaves, my child," Mother Giselle tells him, the latest sally in her long-running campaign. She appeared in his quarters early this morning with an illuminated codex of the Chant of Light—a gift, she said, from the clerics of Val Royeaux to Andraste's Herald—and sits now in a scroll-armed chair near the open doors to the balcony, where the strengthening sunlight can warm her aging bones. "Elven slaves. They destroyed Elvhenan."

She doesn't need to say what she truly means. _Can you really believe that when he looks at you, he sees an equal?_

He shouldn't snap back. The kind of elf she wants him to be wouldn't. A good elf would bow his head and ask for her blessing and send Dorian Pavus out of Skyhold, or at least out of the Inquisitor's bed. But Talmor has never been a good elf, and despite all the Mother's insinuations he hasn't even _slept_ with Dorian yet, and his patience is wearing thin.

"The Chantry destroyed Halamshiral," he retorts. "Do the flat-ears starving in your alienage slums praise your forbearance for their freedom?"

Her mouth tightens. "There have been...mistakes, in the Chantry's past."

"We refused to listen to your missionaries, so you sent templars," he agrees. "And when you burned Halamshiral and stole the lands Andraste's sons gave us, you banned the worship of our gods and forced our brothers to convert at the edge of the sword. Is _that_ the Maker's mercy you'd have me sing, Mother Giselle?"

She sets her teacup down very carefully on the gilded table at her side. "I cannot bludgeon you into belief, Inquisitor. I will not. I only ask you to consider your own experiences. Have you not felt the Maker's blessing in your life? Did you not take Andraste's hand at the Temple of Sacred Ashes?"

This again. "I don't remember," he says wearily. He takes a turn around the hearthrug, drops into a chair. "Maybe it was Mythal."

He expects that to get a rise out of her, if nothing else, but she only regards him a little sadly. "I understood that the Dalish believe your gods have turned from you."

"Our gods were _taken_ from us," he corrects. "Betrayed. Locked away. Very much like their people."

"And still you worship them?"

"Your god abandoned you," he points out, stung. "Isn't that what your whole Chant of Light is about? He doesn't listen to your prayers. He didn't care a whit for the world until he fell in love with some human slave, and he didn't even save her when she burned. He abandoned her and you."

Giselle's dark face shows neither flush nor paling, but her lips thin, and her eyes tighten. She smooths wrinkled hands over her skirts and stands. "I will pray for you, Inquisitor. And I will be here, when you are ready."

She starts for the stairs. Halfway down, she hisses with displeasure; he hears the swish of her skirts drawing aside. And Dorian's voice, light, mocking: "I give you good morning, Mother. Any luck saving our Inquisitor's soul?"

"Look to your own soul, Dorian Pavus," she snaps, more waspish than Talmor's ever heard her. Dorian's soft laughter follows the scuff of her slippers down the stairs.

Talmor slouches back in his chair, slinging one leg over the carved arm-rest, and closes his eyes. "How much of that did you hear?"

"My ears may not be _quite_ so delightfully shaped as yours, but I caught enough." Dorian's cat-soft footsteps track his way to the desk where the detritus of Talmor's breakfast is spread. He sniffs in disdain. "Bread and cheese and blueberry tea, Inquisitor? Whence the peeled grapes and Nevarran wine?"

"You may have a point. That conversation might have gone better if I'd been drunk." Talmor curls his fingers into his palm, tracing the heat of the mark that burns beneath his skin. "Do you believe Andraste pulled me out of the Fade?"

A long pause. Talmor almost opens his eyes, but maybe the darkness against the back of his eyelids is better than seeing either doubt or faith on Dorian's face. Too many people, even among his inner circle, still see Talmor solely as the Inquisitor: their beacon of hope, their bright future, their sacrifice. Dorian knows better, Talmor thinks, but—

"I'd like to believe," Dorian says, very quietly. "It's a warming thought. And you'd deserve it, if anyone did. But…"

Another hesitation. Then the chink of cups, the gurgle of liquid poured. "I've seen how they build up your legend. A few words here, one of Leliana's agents singing a new song there, and a few days later all the talk in the tavern is that you've performed another miracle. Perhaps, as they teach in Tevinter, Andraste was merely a successful mage-general whose legend was built in exactly the same way. Perhaps in another Age or two they'll be singing hymns to you in the Orlesian Chantry."

Talmor jerks his hand up in a reflexive warding gesture against the Dread Wolf's calamities. Dorian laughs again and presses a cup against his marked palm. "Fortunately, I found your stash of Nevarran wine after all."

He has to open his eyes now, or risk spilling all over himself and, more to the point, the housekeeper's embroidered cushions. Dorian is still leaning over him, one hand pressed to the high carved back of the chair, just over Talmor's head. His fingers, long and graceful, overlap Talmor's on the chased silver cup. His touch is always warm. 

"I want to believe," Dorian murmurs. "That what Corypheus told you was wrong. That the Maker has not wholly turned from us. That Andraste saved you for us. But I want to believe that I am the most handsome and cultured scion of Tevinter in this Age, too, and—well, at least I can look in the mirror to know _that's_ objectively true."

Talmor laughs despite himself. Dorian's mouth curls. "You do have the most fetching eyes."

"Compliments will get you everywhere." Talmor takes a mouthful of the wine and sets the cup aside. He shifts, lifting his hips up, and Dorian's eyes crinkle with a smile. 

Dorian is not a big man—not burly like Blackwall or Cullen or, perish the thought, monstrous like the Iron Bull. But he's tall enough and strong enough to pull Talmor up and then settle down beneath him, tugging Talmor into his lap. His long hands chase up Talmor's arms, nearly circling his biceps. Humans are so strange, all their muscle compact and bulky; Dorian seems fascinated by the wiry sinew in Talmor's arms, how deceptively his strength hides. 

"I can understand why you'd prefer to worship gods who were stolen from you rather than one who abandoned you," Dorian says, and Talmor stiffens again. Dorian's warm hands smooth down his arms, calluses on his fingers rasping on the rough silk of Talmor's coat. "But either way, they're gone, aren't they? We're left."

"You mean, _I'm_ left." Talmor tries to shift, but Dorian's hands close around his biceps, holding him still. 

"You're left," Dorian agrees. "Maybe Andraste saved you—at the Conclave, at Haven. Maybe you survived by pure blind luck. Maybe it was your own gods, reaching out from their prison. I don't know. But you're here." His thumbs roll slow circles against the inside of Talmor's arms, and for a breathless distracting moment Talmor can't help but wish the coat and shirt beneath it gone, Dorian's touch on his bare skin. 

He swallows, and shifts again. Dorian notices and smiles, slow and shattering.

"You're here," he repeats quietly. "Andraste's Herald, maybe. The elven gods' champion, maybe. Our leader, certainly. Everything you've done since the Conclave—certainly everything I've seen you do since Redcliffe—has been daring and courage and compassion and strength. Leadership. Andraste or Corypheus might have given you that mark on your hand, but they certainly didn't give you that. You've done it all yourself. And you've done it while being the second-most charming man in Skyhold, and few know better than I what an accomplishment _that_ is."

Steadier ground at last. Talmor leaps for it. "I had to ask Varric for lessons," he says. "He'll be pleased to hear you've finally ranked me above yourself."

" _Varric_ —!" Dorian breaks off, laughing. His hands slip down to Talmor's hips and cup under his butt, hitching him forward. Talmor wiggles a little, experimentally, and is rewarded by the catch in Dorian's breath and the sudden flex of fingers. "You are an unholy menace, Inquisitor," Dorian drawls. 

"Maybe it's a good thing, then, that you're not a religious man." 

"Not as such," Dorian agrees, nipping at the edge of Talmor's jaw. "Our devout Mother Giselle would likely faint if she had any idea of the things I'd like to do to you."

"Given her insinuations about your 'undue influence'," Talmor says wryly, "I suspect you give her imagination too little credit."

Dorian's eyes light up. "Do you think she keeps herself warm at night with the fires of indignation in her breast, thinking over how I must be touching you—here—my corrupt Tevinter hands sliding over your smooth innocent flesh— "

Talmor giggles. Dorian smirks in satisfaction. His roaming hand finally succeeds in tugging Talmor's shirt out of his waistband, and the rough glide of his callused fingertips sets fire to Talmor's skin. No one, feeling that rasping touch, would accuse Dorian of being a pampered nobleman. Blisters, burns, cuts and scrapes, minor injuries even he won't spare magic to heal. He's suffered them all following Talmor, these past three months, and— 

Well, he's murmured plenty of complaints. But Talmor's had his share, too, and he's not sure he'd trust anyone who _didn't_ complain about the little annoyances of their life; even Cassandra has been known to swear at the Fallow Mire's biting flies and perpetually wet socks, and Cassandra probably believes that insulting the Maker's creations is blasphemy. 

Talmor has long believed that the only blasphemy is to reject the gifts the gods give you. There are few enough, after all, and if the gods have reached out from their heavenly prison to touch the world in some way, who would spurn them?

Dorian's hands are a gift. And Dorian's mouth, teasing with lips and teeth and tongue against Talmor's throat, sucking a bruise into the tender skin between neck and shoulder, then laving the sting away. Talmor threads his fingers through Dorian's hair and tips his head back, and offers himself up to Dorian's worship.


End file.
